Jeff Poor

On Tuesday’s broadcast of MSNBC’s “NOW with Alex Wagner,” what began as a plea from Matthews about the importance of voting quickly disintegrated into a rant about how little he thinks of third party candidates participation in the process.

“If you don’t vote, I don’t want to talk to you,” Matthews said. “And if you vote for one of these numbskull third or fourth party candidates like Gary Johnson or Joe Steele and say, ‘Oh I was so surprised at what happened.’ No you shouldn’t be because idiots like you voted for third and fourth party candidates and they don’t know how the system works. You have two choices.”

Matthews noted it had screwed up so many elections, pointing out Ralph Nader’s participation in a number of prior presidential elections.

“It’s screwed up so many of our elections — people being so NPR, so PBS, so hoighty-toighty,” Matthews said. “No: ‘I don’t like backroom politics.’ No, don’t do that. Don’t play referee. You know it’s true.”